The Protagonists

The collectives beneath the surface

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It’s the mega-museum projects in the Gulf that tend to gather Western art headlines, but simmering beneath the surface are collectives and galleries that are responding to one of the art community’s most pressing needs: the lack of affordable studio and exhibition space. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there is a movement to create physical spaces for up-and-coming artists to experiment and show their work. They often take the form of a family’s second residence, much like Bayt AlMamzar and in KSA, “there’s a tradition of using an ‘Istiraha’, a country-house, and there is a kind of flourishing of these independent art spaces,” explains Rahel Aima.

     Over the past fifty years, artistic collectives have emerged across different art cultures as a way for individuals to collaborate and work together. The collectives emerging across the Gulf are reflective of this, but are also unique to the region and its artistic practices. In KSA, Ahmed Mater has plans to create a majlis-style space as part of a new contemporary art institution in Riyadh, a nod to Pharan Studio, the grassroots studio majlis he founded in 2014 in Jeddah. “Social spaces like the majlis are missing in a corporate-style world, but the majlis is where it all starts for Arabs. It’s very democratic. It is held daily, and everyone has their ideas and can come to present them.” (5)‍

     Twin brothers from Dubai, Ahmed and Rashid Bin Shabib, are curators who also started Brownbook, a magazine that acted as a contemporary guide to culture in the Middle East and was twinned with Shelter in 2009 in Alserkal. Around this time Traffic was opened in 2007 by Rami Farook – a project space again in Alserkal that broke the boundaries of gallery/studio settings and centred around a publicly open social space.

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Calling home

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The diaspora feedback loop has had instrumental impacts on art coming from the region. Through educationally-led patronage over the last 10 years, a generation of UAE artists have been funded to study abroad, whether in the USA or Europe, through the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation or Tashkeel. Arab artists living abroad are often seen returning for exhibitions and residencies, feeding into more local and grassroots initiatives – regional residency programmes include Alserkal Arts Foundation with a strong representation of artists from the WANASA territories. The recently established Sharjah Global Studies University’s mandate is to serve both the UAE’s “future generations and international graduates who will become ambassadors of the UAE worldwide”. Further afield the Dhaka Art Summit and Kochi Muziris Biennale bring Gulf artists into the fold with a robust presence of artists exhibiting and working with both entities. The Delfina Foundation in London has worked solidly since 2007 on bringing artists from the region to London for residencies, but also partnering with entities in the UAE such as Tashkeel and Alserkal Arts Foundation.